AHLA's monthly podcast featuring health lawyer and blogger Norm Tabler's informative and entertaining take on recent health law and other legal developments. Sponsored by Coker Group.
To learn more about AHLA and the educational resources available to the health law community, visit americanhealthlaw.org.
AHLA's monthly podcast featuring health lawyer and blogger Norm Tabler's informative and entertaining take on recent health law and other legal developments. Sponsored by Coker Group.
To learn more about AHLA and the educational resources available to the health law community, visit americanhealthlaw.org.
Hi, I'm Norm Taber, host of the A H L A podcast series, the Lighter Side of Health Law, sponsored by Coker Group. I hope you enjoy this month's edition, the Cranky Word list. You'd better sit down before hearing this Astonishing medical discovery recently published in the Journal of Medical Informatics Association. Are you seated? Okay, here goes. Researchers at Partners Healthcare in Boston conducted a study of clinical decision support alerts. The warnings that pop up on the screen as a doctor enters patient information in the electronic health record. The researchers wanted to find a method that would help identify alerts that were wrong or needed improvement. Guess what they found? If doctors repeatedly enter what the researchers called cranky comments, when overriding an alert, there's probably something wrong with the alert. They developed a cranky word list including words like dumb idiot, wrong false end. Please stop. And they prove statistically that if doctors repeatedly enter one or more cranky words in overriding an alert, that alert probably needs to be improved. So now you know courtesy of Partners Healthcare in the shadow of Harvard University. If doctors repeatedly override an alert and call it dumb or idiotic, it may need work. Thank you. Partners Healthcare reckless determination of recklessness. There was recklessness in a recent California medical malpractice case, but not where you would expect it. It was in the printed verdict form. The court gave the jury, Gary Higgins sued Providence Health alleging that its negligence caused the death of his wife. Donna California limits medical malpractice recoveries to$250,000, but the cap does not apply if the defendant was not merely negligent but reckless. The jury answered yes to verdict forms. Question one was the defendant negligent. Question nine asked whether any officer or director of the defendant committed the negligent acts. The jury answered no. The verdict form said to skip question 10. If the answer to question nine was no. So the jury skipped it. Fast forward to question 13. Was the defendant's recklessness a factor in causing the death? The jury answered yes and awarded Gary$1.5 million. So the outcome is clear, right? Well, not exactly. Remember question 10. The one the form said to skip it asked whether the defendant was reckless. Had the jury never answered that question because the form told them not to. So Providence appealed the 1.5 million verdict arguing that because the jury skipped question 10, there was no valid finding of recklessness. The appellate court agreed and reversed and remanded. The case is Higgins versus Providence Health, California Court of Appeal Preventive medicine in the courtroom. Preventive medicine doesn't just treat an existing ailment. It prevents the ailment from occurring in the first place. A recent Florida federal court decision deals with an effort by a group of doctors to prevent a
Speaker 2:Business business problem from occurring. The doctors all regularly perform a procedure called MOS surgery. That's M O H S named for the doctor who originated it. It involves removing thin layers of cancerous skin until only cancer-free tissue remains. It's performed by physicians in several different medical specialties. The plaintiff physicians were afraid that the American Board of Dermatology would formally recognize a subspecialty in MOS and that without board certification in that subspecialty, they would be at a disadvantage to those with the board certification. So without even waiting for the board to create the subspecialty, let alone for it to do anything illegal or harm them, they filed an antitrust suit in federal court against the board and against the umbrella Board of Medical Specialties that would recognize the new subspecialty if there ever was a new subspecialty. Not surprisingly, the court regarded this effort is not just preventive but premature and dismissed it for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. The case is Alan versus American Board of Medical Specialties, middle District, Florida. The judge who went dental. Okay. The judge actually went dental, not dental, but the reason was dental. Namely, the nonstop bickering of lawyers for clients in the dental industry. Aligned technology sued Clear, correct back in 2011 for infringing on its tooth straightening patent. Since then, for eight long years, the two sides have been whining and bickering like sulking six-year-olds that led to Federal Judge Vanessa Gilmore's recent meltdown and her order reading quote, the court is in receipt of the party's whiny letters. What is wrong with you? Parties slash lawyers Just stop it with stop in all capitals for context, the judge wrote quote, this is my oldest and least favorite case. Please stop trying to be my least favorite lawyers and no litigator wants to be a federal judge's least favorite lawyer. The case is aligned Technology versus clear. Correct. Southern District Texas. Four Walls do not a prison make. Here's an inspirational story. Proof that you can imprison a person's body, but not necessarily her spirit. Alexis Norman was imprisoned for healthcare fraud, namely billing Medicaid for services provided by a non-existent company. With the help of co-conspirator Karen Jones, did Alexis let the prison bars prevent her from using her God-given talent for Medicaid fraud? No way. While awaiting her sentence, she formed a new non-existent company to defraud Medicaid. Then in prison, she wrote billing instructions and information about Medicaid clients and providers on a slip of paper, hid the slip of paper in her shoe and sneaked it to Karen During jailhouse visits, Karen then used the information to continue to defraud Medicaid, just as though Alexis were still on the outside Alexis's response when she was caught. Yes, I did it. How else was I supposed to pay my legal bills for the fraud that put me in here in the first place? The case is US versus Norman Northern District Texas. Well, that's it for this month's edition of the Lighter Side of Health Law. I hope you enjoyed it. Check your A H L A Weekly and Connections Magazine for the next edition.